


tempt my trouble

by blackkat



Series: Crossover and Fusion Drabbles [10]
Category: Bleach, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Clint Knows Everyone, Friendship, Gen, Post-Avengers (2012), Problem Solving With Swords
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-07-23 08:48:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16155677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackkat/pseuds/blackkat
Summary: When invisible monsters start eating people after the Chitauri invasion, Clint calls a guy.





	tempt my trouble

“I can't _see them_ ,” Tony says, more than a little wild-eyed. There are four screens up around him, the way there seem to be in every room now, and Clint's not as dumb as he sometimes pretends to be, but he still can't make heads or tails of what’s flickering across the holographic surface.

“They are not precisely pleasant to look at,” Thor says grimly, stretched out on the couch with an icepack pressed against the lump on his head.

“I'm not doing this out of a sense of wonder for the unseen, Point Break,” Tony says, and a wild gesture almost hits Bruce in the face as the scientist surfaces from his own calculations and turns. Clint has half a second to tense, but Bruce just grabs Tony's wrist and pushes it down, hardly even seeming to notice.

On Clint's other side, Natasha relaxes faintly, her breath sliding out in one careful exhale. Clint flicks a glance at her, but she doesn’t look back, glances towards the door instead and says, “Steve should be back from SHIELD soon.”

“SHIELD doesn’t have anything,” Tony says dismissively, and that carefree tone is almost enough to hide the deep lines around his eyes. “And right now the only one on the _planet_ who can see these things before they eat you is Hammertime over there, so excuse me if I'm not falling over myself to—”

“Tony,” Bruce says, and shoves a screen in front of Tony's face. “These readings—I reran them with—”

“You’re theorizing about _dark matter_ , are you kidding me—”

“I was getting energy levels that fit EECRs, and I've seen ultra-long gamma ray bursts with this kind of bolometric flux but the source—”

“But then it drops, like SGRs—”

“ _Yes_ , and if the bursts really are from dark matter self-annihilating—”

“They're not isotropic, that’s for damn sure. JARVIS, map these and run them against encounters with these Halloween Town rejects.”

“Certainly, Sir,” the AI says, and Clint trades glances with Natasha. He raises a brow, and she shakes her head, even though her mouth is curled in the suggestion of amusement. No idea what they’re talking about, but Clint supposes that’s probably to their benefit in the long run.

Still, Tony's words about only Thor being able to see the things—they’ve sparked a thought, and Clint turns it over, chewing on it for a moment before he slides off the back of the couch. His bow is still leaning against the arm, and he picks it up, checks his quiver. Natasha is watching him narrowly, but Clint tips his head towards the elevator and says, “I need to make a few calls.”

Natasha hums, not quite doubtful but definitely wary, and sinks back into her seat, watching him go. She doesn’t protest, and really, that’s permission enough in Clint's book.

JARVIS takes him down to the street without a word, and it’s something of a relief to step out into the open air, even if the city is mostly in ruins here. Clint breathes through the dust, through the guilt that rises like a coil of rage in his chest, and waves to one of the construction crews before turning down another street and pulling out his phone. There aren’t any numbers saved on it, but Clint knows the one he needs. For weird shit and invisible monsters, there aren’t a lot of people he can call, but of the people he can, there's one in particular who’s always willing to pick up.

This time, though, the phone rings, and rings, and rings, and Clint takes a breath, mind spinning. Dangerous jobs and high mortality rates, and he has no idea what his contact actually _does_ outside of hunting monsters, but—

“Moshi moshi,” an annoyed voice says, but it’s a woman, not a man, sharp and a little distracted. “This is Shinji's phone, but he’s a dickbag and can't answer it right now.”

“I thought he was a horseface,” Clint counters, once he’s sorted out the rapid-fire Japanese. He hasn’t been to Japan in a couple of years, and he’s getting rusty.

There's a surprised pause, then a laugh. “He’s always a horseface,” Hiyori says. “Are you still alive, idiot?”

“Would I be calling you if I wasn’t?” Clint asks dryly.

Hiyori snorts at that, like it’s an inside joke, and then says, “If you're looking for Shinji, it’s going to take me a minute to connect you to him. He fucked off and now he’s hard to get a hold of.”

“Can you get him?” Clint asks. “I think I’ve got a problem that’s up his alley.”

“Yeah, sure.” Hiyori sounds vindictively pleased with the idea. “It’ll be good to wake him up early for once, the lazy bastard. Hang on.” There's a rustle, the faint sound of footsteps, and then a half-muffled shout of, “Hey, shithead, you can still call the Seireitei, right?”

“Oh, Hiyori-chan, back already— _ow_.”

“Then do it, Kisuke!”

“No respect,” the man says mournfully, but there's a clank of equipment, a whirr, a hum. “Is that a friend of yours on the other end?”

“Fuck off, you nosy bastard,” Hiyori snaps. “Just put him through to Shinji.”

“I'm going, I'm going—”

“And don’t _smile_ like that! Your face is creepy!”

Clint snorts, climbing over a pile of scattered stone and then sliding down the other side, to where the street is a bit clearer. Out of the Chitauri’s direct path, mostly, and there are still marks of the fight, but fewer. It’s a relief, because the rubble is a _reminder_ , and Clint has been thinking too much as it is.

He takes two more turns, heading deeper into Manhattan, before there's a bright-sharp buzz in his ear, three high chimes, and then a click. “—the hell does this thing even work?” a familiar voice complains.

“Don’t ask _me_ ,” someone else says, exasperated.

“I wouldn’t dream of it, Rose,” the first says, dust-dry, and then suddenly comes in twice as clear. “Yeah?”

“Hey, Shinji,” Clint says, and the flicker of tension eases from his chest. Hiyori said he was around, bu­t—Clint's lost some friends the past few days. He doesn’t want to lose any more. “Still pissing Hiyori off?”

Shinji snickers. “Hiyori’s pissing herself off,” he says in English, and there's the sound of a door sliding closed. “I bet she thinks I'm spending all my time here lounging around. Best way to drive her nuts.”

That sounds like them. Clint snorts, then glances down one street, then another. More people on the first, but—

There's the sight of the battle they just came from, where only Thor could see what they were fighting. He didn’t know what it was, but it killed a woman without pause, practically ate her as she tried to run.

Clint turns down the other street and keeps walking.

“I'm in New York,” he says. “We’re cleaning up from the invasion, but—”

Shinji trips, squawks. “ _Invasion_?” he repeats. “What invasion?”

Blinking, Clint stops. “What invasion,” he echoes. “Japan isn't another planet, how can you not know about a thousand alien whales dropping out of the sky to eat a city?”

“What the _hell_ ,” Shinji huffs, and then, “You asshole, you were right in the middle of it, weren’t you?”

For a moment, all Clint can see is blue light. His breath shakes in his lungs, and he forces himself to keep moving. “It doesn’t matter,” he says. “It’s over. You should watch the news more, but we’ve got another problem.”

“My kind of problem, I'm guessing,” Shinji says suspiciously, and there's a howl of wind like he just stepped out into a hurricane. Clint wrenches the phone away from his ear with a wince as his hearing aids crackle, and he gives it a count of fifteen before he cautiously brings it back.

“—don’t give a damn what Mayuri said,” Shinji is saying somewhere beyond the speaker. “I need a Senkaimon—”

“Look,” Clint says, hoping he’ll hear it, “I just need to know how you’d kill something you can't see—”

“I _can_ see them,” Shinji says, clear again. “That’s the thing, yeah?” A pause, muffled voices in the background, and then he asks, “You near Central Park?”

Clint checks the closest street sign, a little surprised to find he is. Then again, it’s not like Tony would build his tower on anything but prime real estate. “Yeah. Is there something—”

“I’ll meet you at the closest entrance,” Shinji says, and hangs up.

“ _What_ ,” Clint says into the end call screen. “What?” Because he definitely, absolutely just called Japan, and even Tony can't bounce people halfway around the world in twenty seconds flat.

Still, there's no arguing with an ended call, so he picks up his pace, jogging towards Fifth Avenue. This area’s also mostly clear, though there are marks of the monsters they’ve been trying to fight scattered everywhere. Bad luck is the first sign, Tony said. Accidents centered around people, uncommon odds, and it’s not always the case but Clint's seen it too many times now. Two weeks since the Chitauri and Loki and the death toll is only rising.

East Sixty-Fifth Street ends right at the park, and the splash of greenery is almost jarring against the concrete of the surrounding city. Clint crosses the road without waiting for the light, since the traffic is scattered and a hell of a lot lighter than it should be, and heads through the gate, not entirely sure what he’s looking for. Some kind of faster-than-light ship? A teleportation device? Someone getting beamed down Star Trek-style?

Instead, he gets a man in a newsboy cap, black shirt, and silver tie, carrying a sword slung over his shoulder. He raises a hand to Clint as he approaches, grinning, and Clint comes to a stop in the middle of the path, not sure if what he’s feeling is exasperation or warmth.

“How the _fuck_ did you do that?” he demands.

Shinji snickers, tipping his hat back. “Like I’d give up my secrets,” he says lazily, and if anything he looks _younger_ than he did when Clint met him almost ten years ago, more relaxed, easier in his own skin.

“Yeah, well, what’s _not_ a secret is how dumb that haircut is,” Clint retorts. “Did Hiyori get you with a pair of kitchen scissors while you were asleep?”

“It’s _fashionable_!” Shinji protests, putting a hand up like he’s going to protect the asymmetrical slant of his bangs from Clint's judgmental gaze. “You’re just jealous, yeah?”

“I'm really not,” Clint says dryly, but when Shinji reaches out he clasps his forearm, then pulls him into a shoulder-bumping hug. “Hey, you asshole, watch the damn news. What would have happened if the Chitauri hit Tokyo?”

“I probably’d have noticed _that_ ,” Shinji says, grinning, and he taps his sheathed sword against his shoulder, then turns, scanning the street behind them. “Problems, huh?” he asks.

Straight to business, then. Not that Clint really expected anything else. “Invisible monsters,” he says. “They’ve been eating people, and we’ve only got one guy who can see them. Makes getting rid of them a real pain in the ass.”

Shinji's expressive mouth curls down, either disgust or displeasure. “Yeah,” he says, and brings his sword down in front of him, unsheathing it in a smooth, steady motion. Clint tenses, but Shinji steps in front of him, brings his katana up with a sweep, and—

It feels like stepping into a tornado, like jumping out of a plane. Not wind but _force_ , abrasive and dark and _hungry_ , and Clint recoils, an arrow out of his quiver and on his bowstring before he can even think. He jerks his head up, looks—

In the wash of strange sensation, something comes clear.

There's a beast standing in the middle of the street, looming over the parked cars. It’s easily ten times the height of a human, bone-white with black markings traced like lightning across its body, and its head looks like a mask over a mouth full of dripping teeth. Clint releases an arrow on instinct, nocks another, draws—

The mask cracks right down the center, and there's a low, eerie cry. The thing crumbles like ash, dispersing into motes of light as it falls, and by the time it hits the street it’s practically gone.

With a noise of satisfaction, Shinji re-sheathes his sword. “Fuck, there are a lot of Hollows here,” he complains.

“ _What_?” Clint demands. “What the hell was that?”

With an annoyed huff, Shinji tilts his head to look at him. “’S what your guy’s been seeing,” he says with a lazy grin, full of teeth. “Hollows. Gotta hit their masks or they just reform. It’s a pain in the ass, but at least they're mostly gonna be low-level around here. Too much competition for the high-level ones to be common.”

Clint is caught halfway between horror, because Thor was _definitely_ right about them not being pleasant to look at, and relief that this is something Shinji knows and can deal with. “And you just—hit it with a power blast?” he asks. The _how is this my life_ is probably rather heavily implied.

Shinji snickers, touching the brim of his hat like a salute. “Concentrated spiritual energy channeled through Sakanade’s blade,” he says, grinning, and when Clint gives him a look he just shrugs. “You called me, asshole. Believe me or don’t.”

Given that the creature—the Hollow is now a pile of dust motes, Clint's going to believe him, no matter how weird it sounds.

“Tony's going to have a field day with this,” he says with a sigh. “If you drive him into a nervous breakdown, I _definitely_ don’t have the money to pay for his therapy.”

With a laugh, Shinji slings his sword over his shoulder again. “Looks like I'm sticking around for a while, ‘least till the Hollows are under control,” he says. “Lemme call back to the Seireitei and get Rose to cover shit for me.”

“Thanks, Shinji,” Clint says, and breathes out. The relief is a sharp and heady thing. “I owe you one.”

“I’ll add it to your tab,” Shinji says, and Clint laughs.


End file.
